Driving News

A bipartisan group of former state legislative leaders says it has a plan to raise more than $2.5 billion to help fix Michigan’s crumbling roads: A nearly 50-cent gas tax increase spread out over nine years.

The tax hike would be doled out over time to lessen the impact on drivers, according to leaders of the new Michigan Consensus Policy Project, which says it aims to provide bipartisan solutions to some of the state’s most pressing problems in an era of divided state government.

The group maintains that a tax increase of that scale is necessary because the state does not have enough money now to repair its roads, which are among the nation’s worst.